Sound Art and Music Sound Art and Music: Philosophy, Composition, Performance Edited by John Dack, Tansy Spinks and Adam Stanović Sound Art and Music: Philosophy, Composition, Performance Edited by John Dack, Tansy Spinks and Adam Stanović This book first published 2020 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2020 by John Dack, Tansy Spinks, Adam Stanović and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-5781-2 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-5781-9 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures, Tables and Examples ........................................................ vii Foreword ..................................................................................................... x John Dack, Tansy Spinks, Adam Stanović Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Introducing a Compositional Model for Live, Site-specific, Sound Art Performance Tansy Spinks Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 12 The Methodology Mythology: Reconsidering Compositional Practice in Acousmatic Music Adam Stanović Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 37 Antiphonal Authorities: Exchanges of Control and Creativity in Collaborative Electroacoustic Performance James Williams Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 52 Spectromorphology, Animal Voices, Dynamic Soundscapes: Investigative Listening Ann M. Warde Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 70 Touching Sounds: Re-examining Audiotactile Affect with Reference to ASMR YouTube Content and Musical Production Practices Edward K. Spencer Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 93 Agential Instruments: Re-thinking Materiality Through My Recent Compositional Practice Matthew Sergeant vi Table of Contents Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 106 Expressivity in Western-Art and Jazz Piano Performance: An Exploratory Study Alfonso Benetti Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 122 The Making of a Hearing of Voices of Objects Olaf Hochherz Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 138 Re-thinking the Musical Instrument… as a Tool for Thinking Katharina Schmidt Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 154 Casa and other Works: Studies on Audiences and Space in the Piano Recital Késia Decoté Rodrigues Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 175 The Body as Transitory Space of Relations and the Instrument as Multisensory Space: Expressive and Musical Gesture Analysis Slavisa Lamounier and Paulo Ferreira-Lopes Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 191 Using Embodiment Ideals to Mediate the Acoustic and Electronic in a Work for Solo Instrument and Fixed Media: An Experiment in Auto-choreography Hubert Ho Contributors ............................................................................................. 204 Index ........................................................................................................ 212 LIST OF FIGURES, TABLES AND EXAMPLES Figures 1-1 Seafort, North Kent Coast – see colour centrefold 1-2 Seafort, North Kent Coast – see colour centrefold 3-1 Pathways for Discourse during Rehearsal – see colour centrefold 3-2 Transcription of Tam Tam and Hand Bells and Transition into And The Days Are Long 3-3 Duration(s) and Structure of Tam Tam and Bells in Performance A 3-4 Duration(s) and Structure of Tam Tam and Bells in Performance B 3-5 Percentage Duration Differentiations between Performance A and Performance B – see colour centrefold 3-6 Matthews’s notation for Tam Tam and Hand Bells and Cello 4-1 A sequence of calls made by a Black-capped vireo 4-2 A segment from Tenney’s Ergodos II 5-1 ”Kiki” and “Bouba” 5-2 ‘Open’ hand position in the bell 5-3 ‘Closed’ hand position in the bell 5-4 Sonogram for open tone 5-5 Sonogram for hand-stopped tone 5-6 Waveforms for the open tone (above) and hand-stopped tone (below) 6-1 Two Small Bowls 6-2 Flugelhorn as prepared for performance of [terrains] 10-1 Silent Concert 10-2 Les Jours 10-3 Les Jours 10-4 My piano in the midst of the turmoil 10-5 My piano in the midst of the turmoil 10-6 One-to-one Chopin 10-7 Casa 10-8 Casa viii List of Figures, Tables and Examples 10-9 Myths and visions 10-10 Myths and visions 10-11 Myths and visions See colour centrefold for Chapter Eleven images 11-1 Objective Intentional Movement - Rotate Circumduction 11-2 Objective Intentional Movement - Jump 11-3 Intentional Complementary Movement - Walking Movement of arms/hands 11-4 Intentional Complementary Movement - Rotating Movement of arms/hands 11-5 Intentional Complementary Movement - Jumping Movement of arms/hands 11-6 Intentional Movement Auxiliary - Walking Movement of elbows, shoulders, hips and knees 11-7 Intentional Movement Auxiliary - Walking Movement of elbows, shoulders, hips and knees 11-8 Auxiliary Intentional Motion – Rotating Movement of head, neck, shoulders and hips 11-9 Auxiliary Intentional Motion - Rotating Movement of the head, neck, shoulders and hips compared to the footpath - REGULARITY 11-10 Intentional Auxiliary Movement Jumping Movement of head, shoulders and hips 11-11 Auxiliary Intentional Movement - Jumping Movement of the head, shoulders and hips compared to the path taken by the knees - REGULARITY 11-12 Significant Gesture 12-1 Live Performance, MuSA 2016 Tables 3-1 List of Performances 3-2 Pieces featuring in Endings 3-3 Frequent Performances and Collaborators in Music II 7-1 Characteristics of the Interviewees Examples 5-1 Excerpt from Mozart’s Quintet for Horn and Strings Sound Art and Music: Philosophy, Composition, Performance ix 6-1 Excerpt [shell] b.1-3 6-2 Excerpt [place] Module G 12-1 Mei-Fang Lin, Interaction, b.60-61 12-2 Mei-Fang Lin, Interaction, b.74-75 FOREWORD This book is not an attempt to define terms, parameters, or disciplinary borders. Instead it seeks to celebrate the many and varied interests that make the fields of Sound Art and Music such intriguing ones. It is increasingly difficult, and perhaps even of questionable value, to differentiate between these two subject areas. Many Sound Artists celebrate their origins in Fine Art practices and assert their right to work with sound as a material without the weight of music history bearing down on them. On the other hand, composers have demonstrated beyond any doubt that they know how to choose, organise and transform sound as material for their works. That such knowledge can be applied to sounds that are not traditionally associated with music speaks volumes to the scope and breadth of the fields under discussion. The truth is, of course, that Sound Art and Music have much in common. They encompass sound forms stemming from artistic practices to new ways of thinking about the qualitative nature of sound within musical objects and contexts, developing extended modes of devising compositions and showcasing experimental approaches to performance. The contributors to this volume are composers, performers, artists and writers who have, through differing means, become especially intrigued by particular aspects of our engagement with the sonic, or as John Cage has put, the ‘activity’ of sound itself. The chapters have their origins in the Music and Sonic Art Conferences held in 2014 and 2015 at the Institut für Musikinformatik und Musikwissenschaft in Karlsruhe, Germany. Each of the twelve chapters reflect the broad range of approaches adopted by practitioners and researchers. Indeed, it is a recurring theme of this book that theory and practice (like Sound Art and Music) are frequently indistinguishable. The authors therefore consider the body, as a transitional, multisensory space (Lamounier), explored through the analysis of interactivity and gesture, embodiment and auto-choreography in relation to the solo instrument (Ho). The voices of objects (Hochherz), through practices and codes of behaviour in sound receiving spaces, leads to the musical instrument as a tool for thinking (Schmidt), collapsing the distinctions between theory and practice, and investigating the unique qualities of digital musical instruments and new timbres achieved. Collaboration is seen as a means of Sound Art and Music: Philosophy, Composition, Performance xi moving away from and questioning established compositional principles. What may be gained by such an approach (Williams), is then highlighted in the role of prior research within a live, site-specific performance model (Spinks). In terms of means and methods, (Stanovic) questions the validity of compositional rhetoric within acousmatic music.